Hubs are easy peasey, however if the free hub uses tiny springs prepare to hate life (I'm looking at you i9). Work on a clean floor.

A lesson I learned last year was to not gauge hub bearing happiness by the ones you have easy access to check. All but one of the ones I'm running (front an rear) are awesome after ~250 park days, but one in the free hub had half the balls remaining... I had thought it was cassette/chain/derailleur related until I had replaced all those.

I agree about the i9 springs! The little ramps that Hope uses are much easier to work with.

I lost one of my i9 springs...I might just go to a hardware store and see if they have something close enough.

Luckily I swapped over to the steel freehub and got the entire assembly.

You can actually buy the springs from i9 for $1 a piece if you can't find something locally.

I recommend a good vice. It's almost like having a third pair of hands for fork rebuilds and pressing/removing bearings. I want to make some changes to my workshop as well so I'm looking forward to this thread.

I also agree with whoever recommended good lighting. I have some overhead lights in my garage and it's way better than the dim single bulb light I had before.